Smart Furniture: Creating Smart Hot-Spots Everywhere

Many researchers introduced special rooms equipped with sensors, devices, networks, and computers to demonstrate ubiquitous computing environment. However, the cost and time for building such a room is a barrier to the deployment of various ubiquitous applications. We have developed Smart Furniture which instantaneously converts the legacy non-smart space into a Smart Hot-Spot which can provide the accessibility to the Internet, location-based context-aware services, service roaming, and personalization services. Since the Smart Furniture is equipped with networked computers, sensors and various I/O devices, it can provide various services in public space as well as in private space. In this paper, the physical structure and middleware for the Smart Furniture are described. The prototype systems to realize Smart Hot-Spot such as a Personalized Message Board System, a Zero-stop check-out System, and a Mobile TV-phone System.